クラフトパークマレットゴルフ場

Long a destination for those chasing Japan's most dramatic alpine scenery, Ikeda Town sits in Nagano Prefecture's Kitaazumi District at the foot of the Northern Alps, with the Hakuba mountain range and the peaks of the Japan Alps commanding the horizon in nearly every direction. This is a part of Nagano that drew global attention during the 1998 Winter Olympics, and the surrounding highlands carry that same sense of elevation and clarity — clean air, vivid seasonal color, and a landscape that shifts markedly from the lowland rice-farming valleys below.

クラフトパークマレットゴルフ場 is a mallet golf (マレットゴルフ) facility, a form of the game that has deep roots in Nagano Prefecture, which is widely credited as the birthplace of the sport in Japan. Mallet golf uses a fixed mallet-style club, lighter balls, and compact courses designed for all ages and abilities, making it a genuine community game rather than a specialist pursuit.

Courses like this one, set within a craft park environment, typically pair accessible recreational play with outdoor cultural programming — the kind of facility where families and older players gather as much for the setting as the sport itself. The Northern Alps backdrop here would make even a short round feel anything but ordinary.